Chapter XX: Section II: The categories are “the a priori conditions on which the (1)

possibility of experience depends.”[813] By the categories alone “can an object be thought.”[814] The further important point that only in their empirical employment do the categories have use and meaning is excellently developed.

“An _a priori_ concept not referring to experience would be the
logical form only of a concept, but not the concept itself by which
something is thought.”[815]

=A 110-14, II. 4.=--In this section also the argument starts afresh, indicating (if such evidence were required) that, like I. § 14, it must have been written independently of its present context. But the argument is now advanced one step further. The categories are recognised as simultaneously conditioning both unity of consciousness and objectivity.

“There is but one experience ... as there is but one space and one
time....” “The _a priori_ conditions of a possible experience are
at the same time conditions of the possibility of objects of
experience”[816] “...the necessity of these categories rests on the
relation which our whole sensibility, and with it also all possible
appearances, have to the original unity of apperception....”[817]

Now also it is _emphasised_ that save in and through _a priori_ concepts no representations can exist for consciousness.

“They would then belong to no experience, would be without an
object, a blind play of representations, less even than a
dream.”[818] They “would be to us the same as nothing.”[819]

The wording is still not altogether unambiguous, but the main point is made sufficiently clear.

These paragraphs are the earliest in which traces of a genuine phenomenalism can be detected. The transcendental object, one and the same for all our knowledge, is not referred to. ‘Objects’ (in the plural) is the term which is used wherever the context permits. The empirical object is thus made to intervene between the thing in itself and the subjective representations. But the distinction between empirical objects and subjective representations on the one hand, and between empirical objects and things in themselves on the other, is not yet drawn in any really clear and definite manner.

A similar phenomenalist tendency crops out in Kant’s distinction[820] between objective affinity and subjective association.

“The ground of the possibility of the association of the manifold,
so far as it lies in the object, is named the affinity of the
manifold.”

None the less Kant’s subjectivism finds one of its most decided expressions in A 114.

=Third Stage.=--A 119-23 = III. β; A 116-19 = III. α; A 94-5 = I. § 14 C(oncluding paragraph); A 126-8 = III. δ; A 128-30 = S(ummary); A 123-6 = III. γ; A 115-16 = III. I(ntroduction); A 76-9 (B 102-4) = § 10 T(ransition to fourth stage).

=A 119-23, III. β= (from the beginning of the seventh paragraph to the end of the twelfth). The doctrine of objective affinity already developed in the above sections is now made to rest upon a new faculty, the productive imagination. As Vaihinger remarks, the wording of this section would seem to indicate that it is Kant’s first attempt at formulating that new doctrine. He has not as yet got over his own surprise at the revolutionary nature of the conclusions to which he feels himself driven by the exigencies of Critical teaching. He finds that it is deepening into consequences which may lead very far from the current psychology and from his own previous views regarding the nature and conditions of the knowing process and of personality. As evidence that this section was not written continuously with II. 4,[1] we have the further fact that though the doctrine of objective affinity is dwelt upon, it is described afresh, with no reference to the preceding account. Also, the empirical processes of apprehension and reproduction, already mentioned in A 104-10, are now ascribed to the empirical imagination which is carefully distinguished from the productive.

III. α repeats “from above” the argument given in III. β “from below.” It insists upon the close connection between the categories (first introduced in II. 4[821]) with the productive imagination of III. β.

Vaihinger places III. δ next in order, on account of the connection of its argument with III. α.[822] But it dwells only upon the chief outcome of the total argument, viz. that the orderliness of nature is due to understanding. That productive imagination is not mentioned, is taken by Vaihinger to signify Kant’s recognition that it can be postulated only hypothetically, and that as doctrine it is not absolutely essential to the strict deduction.

S summarises the entire argument, and in it “pure imagination” receives mention.

Within this third stage III. γ is subsequent to the above four sections. For it carries the doctrine of productive imagination one step further. In III. β, III. α, and S, productive imagination has been treated merely as an auxiliary function of pure understanding.

“The unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of
imagination is the _understanding_; and the same unity with
reference to the transcendental synthesis of the imagination is the
_pure understanding_.”[823]

It is now treated as a separate and distinct faculty. So far from being a function of understanding, its synthesis “by itself, though carried out _a priori_, is always sensuous.”[824] It is

“one of the fundamental faculties of the human soul.... The two
extreme ends, sensibility and understanding, must be brought into
connection with each other by means of this transcendental function
of imagination.”[825]

In this section there also appears a new element which would seem to connect it with the next following stage, namely, the addition to the series, apprehension, association, and reproduction, of the further process, recognition. As here introduced it is extremely ambiguous in character. It is counted as being empirical, and yet as containing _a priori_ concepts. This decidedly hybrid process would seem to represent Kant’s first formulation of the even more ambiguous process, which corresponds to it in the fourth stage.

In III. I recognition is again mentioned, but this time in a form still more akin to its treatment in the fourth stage. It is not recognition through categories, but, as a form in apperception, is the

“empirical consciousness of the identity of the reproductive
representations with the appearances by which they were
given.”[826]

In all other respects, however, the above six sections agree (along with I. § 14 C) in holding to a threefold division of mental powers: sensibility, imagination, and apperception. This third stage is thereby marked off sufficiently clearly from the second stage in which pure imagination is wanting, and from the fourth stage in which it is dissolved into a threefold _a priori_ synthesis.

In both I. § 14 C and in III. I the classification which underlies the third stage is explicitly formulated. Their statements harmoniously combine to yield the following tabular statement:

1. The _synopsis_ of the manifold--_a priori_ through sense, _i.e._ in pure intuition.

2. The synthesis of this manifold--through pure transcendental imagination.

3. The unity of this synthesis--through pure original transcendental apperception.

At this point Vaihinger adds to the above section the earlier passage § 10 T.[827] It is even more definitely than III. γ and III. I transitional to the fourth stage. It must be classed within the third stage, as it holds to the above threefold classification. But it modifies that classification in two respects. First, in that it does not employ the term _synopsis_, but only speaks of pure intuition as required to yield us a manifold. The term synopsis, as used by Kant, is, however, decidedly misleading.[828] His invariable teaching is that all connection is due to synthesis. By synopsis, therefore, which he certainly does not employ as synonymous with synthesis, can be meant only apprehension of external side-by-sideness. It never signifies anything except apprehension of the lowest possible order. Kant’s omission of the term, therefore, tends to clearness of statement. Secondly, the classification is also modified by the substitution of understanding for the unity of apperception. Apperception is, however, so obscurely treated in all of the above sections, that this cannot be regarded as a vital alteration. What is new in this section, and seems to connect it in a curious and interesting manner with sections in the fourth stage, is its doctrine of

“a manifold of _a priori_ sensibility.” “Space and time contain a
manifold of pure _a priori_ intuition.”[829]

That is, in this connection, an entirely new doctrine. In all the previous sections of the deduction (previous in the assumed order of original writing) the manifold supplied through intuition is taken as being empirical, and as consisting of sensations. Kant here also adds that the manifold, “whether given empirically or _a priori_,”[830] must be synthesised before it can be known.

“The spontaneity of our thought requires that this manifold [of
pure _a priori_ intuition] should be run through in a certain
manner, taken up, and connected, in order that a knowledge may be
formed out of it. This action I call synthesis.”

=Fourth Stage.--A 98-104; A 97-8.=--As already noted, there are in Kant two persistent but conflicting interpretations of the nature of the synthetic processes exercised by imagination and understanding, the subjectivist and the phenomenalist.[831] Now, on the former view, imagination is simply understanding _at work_. In other words, imagination is merely the active synthesising side of a faculty whose complementary aspect appears in the logical unity of the concept. From this point of view the transcendental and the empirical factors may be taken as forming a single series. The transcendental and the empirical processes will vary together, some form of transcendental activity corresponding to every fundamental form of empirical activity and _vice versa_. Such an inference only follows _if_ the subjectivist standpoint be accepted to the exclusion of the phenomenalist point of view. But since Kant constantly alternates between them, and never quite definitely formulates them in their distinction and opposition; since, in fact, they were rather of the nature of obscurely felt tendencies than of formulated standpoints, it is quite intelligible that an inference derived from the one should be drawn even at the very time when the other is being more explicitly developed. This, it would seem, is what actually happened. When we come to consider the evidence derivable from the _Reflexionen_ and _Lose Blätter_, we shall find support for the view that after January 1780, on the very eve of the publication of the _Critique_, while the revolutionary, phenomenalist consequences of the Critical hypothesis were becoming clearer to him, he unguardedly allowed the above inference to lead him to recast his previous views in a decidedly subjectivist manner. The view that transcendental imagination has a special and unique activity altogether different in type from any of its empirical processes, namely, the “productive,” is now allowed to drop; and in place of it Kant develops the view that transcendental functions run exactly parallel with the empirical processes of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition. Accordingly, in place of the classification presented in the third stage, we find a new and radically different one introduced into the text, without the least indication that Kant’s standpoint has meantime changed. It is given in A 97:

A. =Synopsis= of the manifold through sense.

B. =Synthesis.=

1. Synthesis of apprehension of representations in [inner] intuition.
2. Synthesis of reproduction of representations in imagination.
3. Synthesis of recognition of representations in the concept.

And Kant adds in explanation that “these point to three subjective sources of knowledge which make the understanding itself possible, and which in so doing make all experience possible, in so far as it is an empirical product of the understanding.” What, now, are these three subjective sources of knowledge? They certainly are not those classified in the table of the third stage. _A_ roughly coincides with its first member; consequently _B_ 1 is left without proper correlate. _B_ 2 is altogether different from the previous synthesis of imagination, for in the earlier table transcendental imagination is regarded as being solely productive, _never_ reproductive.[832] It is now asserted to be reproductive--a contradiction of one of his own most emphatic contentions, which can only be accounted for by some such explanation as we are here stating. Nothing is lacking as regards explicitness in the statement of this new position. “...the _reproductive_ synthesis of imagination belongs to the transcendental acts of the soul, and, in reference to it [viz. to the reproductive synthesis], we will call this power too the transcendental power of the imagination.”[833] Lastly, even B 3 does not coincide with the pure apperception of the other table. B 3 is more akin to the recognition which in the third stage is declared to be always empirical. In any case, it is recognition _in the concept_; and though that may ultimately involve and condition transcendental apperception, it remains, in the manner in which it is here developed by Kant, something very different. But this is a point to which we shall return. There is an added complication, running through this entire stage, which first requires to be disentangled. The transcendental syntheses are declared to condition the pure representations of space and time no less than those of sense-experience.

“This synthesis of apprehension also must be executed _a priori_,
_i.e._ in reference to representations which are not empirical. For
without it we could not have the _a priori_ representations either
of space or of time, since these can be generated only through the
synthesis of the manifold which sensibility presents in its
original receptivity. Thus we have a pure synthesis of
apprehension”[834] “...if I draw a line in thought or desire to
think of the time from one noon to another, or merely represent to
myself a certain number, I must, firstly, apprehend these manifold
representations one after the other. But if the preceding
representations (the first parts of the line, the antecedent parts
of time or the units serially represented) were always to drop out
of my thought, and were not reproduced when I advance to those that
follow, no complete representation, and none of all the
aforementioned thoughts, not even the purest and first basal
representations of space and time, could ever arise.”[835]

This, as Vaihinger remarks, is a point of sufficient importance to justify separate treatment. But it is introduced quite incidentally by Kant, and obscures quite as much as it clarifies the main argument.

It is convenient to start with the second synthesis. Kant’s argument is much clearer in regard to it than in regard to the other two. He distinguishes between empirical and transcendental reproduction. Reproduction in ordinary experience, in accordance with the laws of association, is merely empirical. The _de facto_ conformity of appearances to rules is what renders such empirical reproduction possible;

“...otherwise our faculty of empirical imagination would never find
any opportunity of action suited to its capacities, and would
remain hidden within the mind as a dead, and to us unknown
power.”[836]

Kant proceeds to argue, consistently with his doctrine of objective affinity, that empirical reproduction is itself transcendentally conditioned. The form, however, in which this argument is developed is peculiar to the section before us, and is entirely new.

“If we can show that even our purest _a priori_ intuitions yield no
knowledge, save in so far as they contain such connection of the
manifold as will make possible a thoroughgoing synthesis of
reproduction, this synthesis of the imagination must be grounded,
prior to all experience, on _a priori_ principles; and since
experience necessarily presupposes that appearances can be
reproduced, we shall have to assume a pure transcendental synthesis
of the imagination as conditioning even the possibility of all
experience.”[837]

In the concluding paragraph Kant makes clear that he regards this _transcendental_ activity as being exercised in a twofold manner: in relation to the _empirically_ given manifold as well as in relation to the _a priori_ given manifold. How this transcendental activity is to be distinguished from the empirical is not further explained. I discuss this point below.[838]

The argument of the section on the synthesis of _apprehension_, to which we may now turn back, suffers from serious ambiguity. It is not clear whether a distinction, analogous to that between empirical and transcendental reproduction, is being made in reference to apprehension. The actual wording of its two last paragraphs would lead to that conclusion. That, however, is a view which would seem to be excluded by the wider context. Kant is dealing with the synthesis of apprehension in _inner_ intuition, _i.e._ in time. By the fundamental principles of his teaching such intuition must always be transcendental. Empirical apprehension can only concern the data of the special senses. The process of apprehension referred to in the middle paragraph must therefore itself be transcendental.

But it is in dealing with the synthesis of _recognition_ that the argument is most obscure. It is idle attempting to discover any possible distinction between an empirical and a transcendental process of recognition. For the transcendental process here appears as being the consciousness that what we are thinking now is the same as what we thought a moment before; and it is illustrated not by reference to the pure intuitions of space and time, but only by the process of counting. It may be argued that empirical recognition is mediated by transcendental factors--by pure concepts and by apperception. But unless we are to take transcendental recognition as synonymous with transcendental apperception, which Kant’s actual teaching does not seem to justify us in doing, such considerations will not enable us to distinguish two forms of recognition. Apart, however, from this difficulty, there is the further one that the concepts in and through which the recognition is executed are here described as being empirical. The only key that will solve the mystery of this extraordinary section, hopelessly inexplicable when viewed as a single continuous whole, is, it would seem, the theory of Vaihinger, namely,[839] that from the third paragraph onwards (already dealt with as forming the first stage of the deduction) Kant is making use of manuscript which represents the _earliest_ form in which his explanation of the consciousness of objects was developed, with the strange result that this section is a combination of the latest and of the earliest forms of the deduction. While seeking to make out a parallelism between the empirical, conscious activities of imagination and understanding on the one hand, and its transcendental functions on the other, he must have bethought himself of the earlier attempt to explain consciousness of objects through empirical concepts conditioned by transcendental apperception, and so have attempted to expound the third form of synthesis by means of it. As thus extended it involves a distinction between transcendental and empirical apperception, and upon that the discussion, so far as it concerns anything akin to recognition, altogether turns. But there is not the least further mention of recognition itself. As transcendental, it cannot be taken as the equivalent of empirical apperception; and as a synthesis through concepts, can hardly coincide with pure apperception. The title of the section, “the synthesis of recognition in the concept,” is thus no real indication of the astonishing fare prepared for the reader. The doctrine of a threefold synthesis seems to have occurred to Kant on the very eve of the publication of the _Critique_. The passage expounding it may well have been hurriedly composed, and when unforeseen difficulties accumulated, especially in regard to recognition as a transcendental process, Kant must have resolved simply to close the matter by inserting the older manuscript.

=III. Evidence yielded by the “Reflexionen” and “Lose Blätter” in support of the above analysis.=

The evidence, derived by Vaihinger from the _Reflexionen_ and _Lose Blätter_, briefly outlined, is as follows.[840] (1) In the _Reflexionen zur Anthropologie_ relevant passages are few in number, and represent a standpoint very close to that of the 1770 _Dissertation_. Imagination is treated only as an empirical faculty.[841] Recognition, which is only once mentioned,[842] is also viewed as merely empirical. The understanding is spoken of as the faculty through which objects are thought.[843] The categories are not mentioned, and it is stated that the understanding yields only ideas of reflection. “All knowledge of things is derived, as regards its matter, from sensation--the understanding gives only ideas of reflection.”[844] So far, these _Reflexionen_ would seem to coincide, more or less, with the first stage of the deduction. They contain, however, no reference to _transcendental_ apperception; and are therefore regarded by Vaihinger as representing a still earlier standpoint.

(2) In the _Reflexionen zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ there is a very large and valuable body of relevant passages. No. 925 must be of the same date as the letter of 1772 to Herz; it formulates its problem in practically identical terms.[845] Nos. 946-52 and 955 may belong to the period of the first stage. For though the doctrine of the transcendental object as the opposite counterpart of the transcendental subject is not mentioned, the spiritualist view of the self is prominent. In No. 946 it is asserted that the representation of an object is “made by us through freedom.”

“Free actions are already given _a priori_, namely our own.”[846]
“To pass universal objective judgments, and to do so apodictically,
reason must be free from subjective grounds of determination. For
were it so determined the judgment would be merely accidental,
namely in accordance with its subjective cause. Thus reason is
conscious _a priori_ of its freedom in objectively necessary
judgments in so far as it apprehends them as exclusively grounded
through their relation to the object.”[847] “Transcendental freedom
is the necessary hypothesis of all rules, and therefore of all
employment of the understanding.”[848] “Appearances are
representations whereby we are affected. The representation of our
free self-activity does not involve affection, and accordingly is
not appearance, but apperception.”[849]

It is significant that the categories receive no mention.

Almost all the other _Reflexionen_ would seem to have originated in the period of the second stage of the deduction; but they still betray a strong spiritualist bias.

“Impressions are not yet representations, for they must be related
to something else which is an action. Now the reaction of the mind
is an action which relates to the impression, and which if taken
alone[850] may in its special forms receive the title
categories.”[851] “We can know the connection of things in the
world only if we produce it through a universal action, and so out
of a principle of inner power (_aus einem Prinzip der inneren
Potestas_): substance, ground, combination.”[852]

These _Reflexionen_ recognise only the categories of relation,[853] and must therefore be prior to the twelvefold classification. There is not the least trace of the characteristic doctrines of the third and fourth stages of the deduction, viz. of the transcendental function of the imagination or of a threefold transcendental synthesis. The nature of apprehension is also most obscure. It is frequently equated with apperception.

(3) The _Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass_ (Heft I.) contains fragments which also belong to the second stage of the deduction, but which would seem to be of somewhat earlier date than the above _Reflexionen_.[854] They have interesting points of contact with the first stage. Thus though the phrase transcendental object does not occur in them, the object of knowledge is equated with _x_, and is regarded in the manner of the first stage as the opposite counterpart of the unity of the self.[855] These fragments belong, however, to the second stage in virtue of their recognition of the _a priori_ categories of relation. There is also here, as is in the _Reflexionen_, great lack of clearness regarding the nature of apprehension; and there is still no mention of the transcendental faculty of imagination. Fragment 8 is definitely datable. It covers the free spaces of a letter of invitation dated May 20, 1775.[856] Fragment B 12[857] belongs to a different period from the above. This is sufficiently evident from its contents; but fortunately the paper upon which it is written--an official document in the handwriting of the Rector of the Philosophical Faculty of Königsberg--enables us to decide the exact year of its origin. It is dated January 20, 1780. The fragment must therefore be subsequent to that date. Now in it transcendental imagination appears as a third faculty alongside sensibility and understanding, and a distinction is definitely drawn between its empirical and its transcendental employment. The former conditions the synthesis of apprehension; the latter conditions the synthetic unity of apperception. It further distinguishes between reproductive and productive imagination, and ascribes the former exclusively to the empirical imagination. In all these respects it stands in complete agreement with the teaching of the third stage of the deduction. The fact that this fragment is subsequent to January 1780 would seem to prove that even at that late date Kant was struggling with his deduction.[858] But the most interesting of all Vaihinger’s conclusions has still to be mentioned. He points out that at the time when this fragment was composed Kant had not yet developed the doctrine characteristic of the fourth stage, namely, of a threefold transcendental synthesis. Moreover, as he observes, the statement which it explicitly contains, that reproductive imagination is always empirical, is inconsistent with any such doctrine. The teaching of the fourth stage must consequently be ascribed to an even later date.[859]

(4) The _Lose Blätter_ (Heft II.), though almost exclusively devoted to moral and legal questions, contain in E 67[860] a relevant passage which Reicke regards as belonging to the ‘eighties, but which Adickes and Vaihinger agree in dating “shortly before 1781.” On Vaihinger’s view it is a preliminary study for the passages of the fourth stage of the deduction. But such exact dating is not essential to Vaihinger’s argument. It is undoubtedly quite late, and contains the following sentence:

“All representations, whatever their origin, are yet ultimately as
representations modifications of inner sense, and their unity must
be viewed from this point of view. A spontaneity of synthesis
corresponds to their receptivity: either of apprehension as
sensations or of reproduction as images (_Einbildungen_) or of
recognition as concepts.”

This is the doctrine from which the deduction of the first edition _starts_; it was, it would seem, _the last to be developed_.[861] That we find no trace of it in the _Prolegomena_, and that it is not only eliminated from the second edition, but is expressly disavowed,[862] would seem to indicate that it had been hastily adopted on the very eve of publication, and that upon reflection Kant had felt constrained definitively to discard it. The threefold synthesis can be verified on the empirical level, but there is no evidence that there exist corresponding transcendental activities.

=IV. Connected Statement and Discussion of Kant’s Subjective and Objective Deductions in the First Edition=

Such are the varying and conflicting forms in which Kant has presented his deduction of the categories. We may now apply our results to obtain a connected statement of the essentials of his argument. The following exposition, which endeavours to emphasise its main broad features, to distinguish its various steps, and to disentangle its complex and conflicting tendencies, will, I trust, yield to the reader such steady orientation as is necessary in so bewildering a labyrinth. In the meantime I shall take account only of the deductions of the first edition,[863] and from them shall strive to construct the ideal statement to which they severally approximate. Any single relatively consistent and complete deduction that is thus to serve as a standard exposition must, like the root-languages of philology, be typical or archetypal, representing the argument at which Kant aimed; it cannot be one of the alternative expositions which he himself gives. Such reconstruction of an argument which Kant has failed to express in a final and genuinely adequate form must, of course, lie open to all the dangers of arbitrary and personal interpretation. It is an extremely adventurous undertaking, and will have to be carefully guarded by constant reference to Kant’s _ipsissima verba_. Proof of its historical validity will consist in its capacity to render intelligible Kant’s own departures from it, and in its power of explaining the reasons of his so doing. Its expository value will be in proportion to the assistance which it may afford to the reader in deciphering the actual texts.

Our first task is to make clear the nature of the distinction which Kant draws between the “subjective” and the “objective” deductions. This is a distinction of great importance, and raises issues of a fundamental character. In regard to it students of Kant take widely different views. For it brings to a definite issue many of the chief controversies regarding Critical teaching. Kant has made some very definite statements in regard to it; and one of the opposing schools of interpretation finds its chief and strongest arguments in the words which he employs. But for reasons which will appear in due course, adherence to the letter of the _Critique_ would in this case involve the commentator in great difficulties. We have no option except to adopt the invidious position of maintaining that we may now, after the interval of a hundred years and the labours of so many devoted students, profess to understand Kant better than he understood himself. For such procedure we may indeed cite his own authority.

“Not infrequently, upon comparing the thoughts which an author has
expressed in regard to his subject, whether in ordinary
conversation or in writing, we find that we can understand him
better than he understood himself. As he has not sufficiently
determined his concept, he has sometimes spoken, or even thought,
in opposition to his own intention.”[864]

Let us, then, consider first the distinction between the two types of deduction in the form in which it is drawn by Kant. In the _Preface_ to the first edition,[865] Kant states that his transcendental deduction of the categories has two sides, and assigns to them the titles subjective and objective.

“This enquiry, which is somewhat deeply grounded, has two sides.
The one refers to the objects of pure understanding, and is
intended to expound and render intelligible the objective validity
of its _a priori_ concepts. It is therefore essential to my
purposes. The other seeks to investigate the pure understanding
itself, its possibility and the cognitive faculties upon which it
rests. Although this latter exposition is of great importance for
my chief purpose, it does not form an essential part of it. For the
chief question is always simply this,--what and how much can the
understanding and Reason know apart from all experience? not--how
is the faculty of thought itself possible? The latter is as it were
a search for the cause of a given effect; and therefore is of the
nature of an hypothesis (though, as I shall show elsewhere, this is
not really so); and I would appear to be taking the liberty simply
of expressing an opinion, in which case the reader would be free to
express a different opinion.[866] For this reason I must forestall
the reader’s criticism by pointing out that the objective
deduction, with which I am here chiefly concerned, retains its full
force even if my subjective deduction should fail to produce that
complete conviction for which I hope....”

The subjective deduction seeks to determine the subjective conditions which are required to render knowledge possible, or to use less ambiguous terms the generative processes to whose agency human knowledge is due. It is consequently psychological in character. The objective deduction, on the other hand, is so named because it deals not with psychological processes but with questions of objective validity. It enquires how concepts which are _a priori_, and which as _a priori_ must be taken to originate in pure reason, can yet be valid of objects. In other words, the objective deduction is logical, or, to use a post-Kantian term, epistemological in character.

It is indeed true, as Kant here insists, that the subjective deduction does not concern itself in any quite direct fashion with the Critical problem--how _a priori_ ideas can relate to objects. “Although of great importance for my chief purpose, it does not form an essential part of it.” This, no doubt, is one reason why Kant omitted it when he revised the _Critique_ for the second edition.[867] None the less it is, as he here says, important; and what exactly that importance amounts to, and whether it is really true that it has such minor importance as to be rightly describable as unessential, is what we have to decide.

Though empirical psychology, in so far as it investigates the temporal development of our experience, is, as Kant very justly claims, entirely distinct in aim and method from the Critical enquiry, the same cannot be said of a psychology which, for convenience, and on the lines of Kant’s own employment of terms, may be named transcendental.[868] For it will deal, not with the temporal development of the concrete and varied aspects of consciousness, but with the more fundamental question of the generative conditions indispensably necessary to consciousness as such, _i.e._ to consciousness in each and every one of its possible embodiments. In the definition above given of the objective deduction, I have intentionally indicated Kant’s unquestioning conviction that the _a priori_ originates independently of the objects to which it is applied. This independent origin is only describable in mental or psychological terms. The _a priori_ originates from within; it is due to the specific conditions upon which human thinking rests. Now this interpretation of the _a priori_ renders the teaching contained in the subjective deduction much more essential than Kant is himself willing to recognise. The conclusions arrived at may be highly schematic in conception, and extremely conjectural in detail; they are none the less required to supplement the results of the more purely logical analysis. For though in the second edition the sections devoted to the subjective deduction are suppressed, their teaching, and the distinctions which they draw between the different mental processes, continue to be employed in the exposition of the objective deduction, and indeed are presupposed throughout the _Critique_ as a whole. They are indispensably necessary in order to render really definite many of the contentions which the objective deduction itself contains. To eliminate the subjective deduction is not to cut away these presuppositions, but only to leave them in the obscure region of the undefined. They will still continue to influence our mode of formulating and of solving the Critical problem, but will do so as untested and vaguely outlined assumptions, acting as unconscious influences rather than as established principles. For these reasons the omission of the subjective deduction is to be deplored. The explicit statement of the implied psychological conditions is preferable to their employment without prior definition and analysis. The deduction of the second edition rests throughout upon the initial and indispensable assumption, that though connection or synthesis can never be given, it is yet the generative source of all consciousness of order and relation. Factors which are transcendental in the strict or logical meaning of the term rest upon processes that are transcendental in a psychological sense.

This last phrase, ‘transcendental in a psychological sense,’ calls for a word of justification. The synthetic processes generative of experience are not, of course, transcendental in the strict sense. For they are not _a priori_ in the manner of the categories. None the less they are discoverable by the same transcendental method, namely, as being, like the categories, indispensably necessary to the possibility of experience. They differ from the categories in that they are not immanent in experience, constituent of it, and cannot therefore be known in their intrinsic nature. As they fall outside the field of consciousness, they can only be hypothetically postulated. None the less, formal categories and generative processes, definable elements and problematic postulates, alike agree in being conditions _sine qua non_ of experience. And further, in terms of Kant’s presupposed psychology, the latter are the source to which the former are due. There would thus seem to be sufficient justification for extending the term transcendental to cover both; and in so doing we are following the path which Kant himself willingly travelled. For such would seem to have been his unexpressed reasons for ascribing, as he does, the synthetic generative processes to what he himself names transcendental faculties.

This disposes of Kant’s chief reason for refusing to recognise the subjective deduction as a genuine part of the Critical enquiry, namely, the contention upon which he lays such emphasis in the prefaces both of the first and of the second edition,[869] that in transcendental philosophy nothing hypothetical, nothing in any degree dependent upon general reasoning from contingent fact, can have any place. That contention proves untenable even within the domain of his purely logical analyses. The very essence of his transcendental method consists in the establishment of _a priori_ elements through proof of their connection with factual experience. Kant is here revealing how greatly his mind is still biased by the Leibnizian rationalism from which he is breaking away. His _a priori_ cannot establish itself save in virtue of hypothetical reasoning.[870] His transcendental method, rightly understood, does not differ in essential nature from the hypothetical method of the natural sciences; it does so only in the nature of its starting-point, and in the character of the analyses which that starting-point prescribes. And if hypothetical reasoning may be allowed in the establishment of the logical _a priori_, there is no sufficient reason why it may not also be employed for the determination of dynamical factors. The sole question is as to whether the hypotheses conform to the logical requirements and so raise themselves to a different level from mere opinion and conjecture.[871] As Kant himself says,[872] though his conclusions in the subjective deduction may seem to be hypothetical in the illegitimate sense, they are not really so. From the experience in view of which they are postulated they receive at once the proof of their actuality and the material for their specification.

We may now return to the question of the nature of the two deductions. The complex character of their interrelations may be outlined as follows:

1. Though the subjective deduction is in its later stages coextensive with its objective counterpart, in its earlier stages it moves wholly on what may be called the empirical level. The data which it analyses and the conditions which it postulates are both alike empirical. The objective deduction, on the other hand, deals from start to finish with the _a priori_.

2. The later stages of the subjective deduction are based upon the results of the objective deduction. The existence and validity of _a priori_ factors having been demonstrated by transcendental, _i.e._ logical, analysis, the subjective deduction can be extended from the lower to the higher level, and can proceed to establish for the _a priori_ elements what in its earlier stages it has determined for empirical consciousness, namely, the nature of the generative processes which require to be postulated as their ground and origin. When the two deductions are properly distinguished the objective deduction has, therefore, to be placed midway between the initial and the final stages of the subjective deduction.

3. The two deductions concentrate upon different aspects of experience. In the subjective deduction experience is chiefly viewed as a _temporal process_ in which the given falls apart into successive events, which, in and by themselves, are incapable of constituting a unified consciousness. The fundamental characteristic of human experience, from this point of view, is that it is _serial_ in character. Though it is an apprehension of time, it is itself also a process in time. In the objective deduction, on the other hand, the time element is much less prominent. Awareness of _objects_ is the subject-matter to which analysis is chiefly devoted. This difference very naturally follows from the character of the two deductions. The subjective enquiry is mainly interested in the conditions generative of experience, and finds its natural point of departure in the problem by what processes a unified experience is constructed out of a succession of distinct happenings. The objective deduction presents the logical problem of validity in its most striking form, in our awareness of objects; the objective is contrasted with the subjective as being that which is universally and necessarily the same for all observers. Ultimately each of the two deductions must yield an analysis of both types of consciousness--awareness of time and awareness of objects; _a priori_ factors are involved in the former no less than in the latter, and both are conditioned by generative processes. Unfortunately the manner in which this is done in the _Critique_ causes very serious misunderstanding. The problem of the psychological conditions generative of consciousness of objects is raised[873] before the logical analysis of the objective deduction has established the data necessary for its profitable discussion. The corresponding defect in the objective deduction is of a directly opposite character, but is even more unfortunate in its effects. The results obtained from the analysis of our awareness of objects are not, within the limits of the objective deduction, applied in further analysis of our consciousness of time. That is first done, and even then by implication rather than by explicit argument, in the _Analytic of Principles_. This has the twofold evil consequence, that the relations holding between the two deductions are very greatly obscured, and that the reader is not properly prepared for the important use to which the results of the objective deduction are put in the _Analytic of Principles_. For it is there assumed--a quite legitimate inference from the objective deduction, but one whose legitimacy Kant has nowhere dwelt upon and explained--that to be conscious of time we must be conscious of it as existing in two distinct orders, subjective and objective. To be conscious of time we must be conscious of objects, and to be conscious of objects we must be able to distinguish between the order of our ideas and the order of the changes (if any) in that which is known by their means.

Thus the two deductions, properly viewed in their full scope, play into one another’s hands. The objective deduction is necessary to complete the analysis of time-consciousness given in the subjective deduction, and the extension of the analysis of object-consciousness to the explanation of time-consciousness is necessary in order to make quite definite and clear the full significance of the conclusions to which the objective enquiry has led.[874]

One last point remains for consideration. Experience is a highly ambiguous term, and to fulfil the rôle assigned to it by Kant’s transcendental method--that of establishing the reality of the conditions of its own possibility--its actuality must lie beyond the sphere of all possible controversy. It must be itself a datum, calling indeed for explanation, but not itself making claims that are in any degree subject to possible challenge. Now if we abstract from all those particularising factors which are irrelevant in this connection, we are left with only three forms of experience--experience of self, experience of objects, and experience of time. The two former are open to question. They may be illusory, as Hume has argued. And as their validity, or rather actuality, calls for establishment, they cannot fulfil the demands which the transcendental method exacts from the experience whose possibility is to yield proof of its discoverable conditions. Consciousness of time, on the other hand, is a fact whose actuality, however problematic in its conditions, and however mysterious in its intrinsic nature, cannot, even by the most metaphysical of subtleties, be in any manner or degree challenged. It is an unquestioned possession of the human mind. Whether time itself is real we are not metaphysically certain, but that, whatever be its reality or unreality, we are conscious of it in the form of change, is beyond all manner of doubt. Consciousness of time is the _factual_ experience, as conditions of whose possibility the _a priori_ factors are transcendentally proved. In so far as they can be shown to be its indispensable conditions, its mere existence proves their reality. And such in effect is the ultimate character of Kant’s proof of the objective validity of the categories. They are proved in that it is shown that only in and through them is consciousness of time possible.

The argument gains immeasurably in clearness when this is recognised;[875] and the deduction of the first edition of the _Critique_, in spite of its contorted character, remains in my view superior to that of the second edition owing to this more explicit recognition of the temporal aspect of consciousness and to employment of it as the initial starting-point. Analysis at once reveals that though consciousness of time is undeniably actual, it is conditioned in complex ways, and that among the conditions indispensably necessary to its possibility are both consciousness of self and consciousness of an objective order of existence. Starting from the undeniable we are thus brought to the problematic; but owing to the factual character of the starting-point we can substantiate what would otherwise remain open to question.

As this method of formulating Kant’s argument gives greater prominence to the temporal factor than Kant himself does in his statement of the deductions, the reader may very rightly demand further evidence that I am not, by this procedure, setting the deductions in a false or arbitrary perspective. Any statement of Kant’s position in other than his own _ipsissima verba_ is necessarily, in large part, a matter of interpretation, and proof of its correctness must ultimately consist in the success with which it can be applied in unravelling the manifold strands that compose his tortuous and many-sided argument; but the following special considerations may be cited in advance. Those parts of the _Critique_, such as the chief paragraphs of the subjective deduction and the chapter on _Schematism_, which are demonstrably late in date of writing, agree in assigning greater prominence to the temporal aspect of experience. This is also true of those numerous passages added in the second edition which deal with inner sense. All of these show an increasing appreciation of the central rôle which time must play in the Critical enquiries. Secondly, proof of the validity of _specific_ categories is given, as we shall find,[876] not in the objective deduction of the _Analytic of Concepts_, but only in the _Analytic of Principles_. What Kant gives in the former is only the quite general demonstration that forms of unity, such as are involved in all judgment, are demanded for the possibility of experience. Now when proof of the specific categories does come, in the _Analytic of Principles_, it is manifestly based on the analysis of time-experience. In the three _Analogies_, for example, Kant’s demonstration of the objective validity of the categories of relation consists in the proof that they are necessary conditions of the possibility of our time-consciousness. That is to say, the transcendental method of proof, when developed in full detail, in reference to some specific category, agrees with the formulation which I have given of the subjective and objective deductions. In the third place, Kant started from a spiritualist standpoint, akin to that of Leibniz,[877] and only very gradually broke away from the many illegitimate assumptions which it involves. But this original starting-point reveals its persisting influence in the excessive emphasis which Kant continued to lay upon the unity of apperception. He frequently speaks[878] as if it were an ultimate self-justifying principle, by reference to which the validity of all presupposed conditions can be established. But that, as I have already argued, is a legitimate method of procedure only if it has previously been established that self-consciousness is involved in all consciousness, that is, involved even in consciousness of sequence and duration. And as just stated, the deductions of specific categories, given in the _Analytic of Principles_, fulfil these requirements of complete proof. They start from the time-consciousness, not from apperception.

I shall now summarise these introductory discussions in a brief tabulated outline of the main steps in the argument of the two deductions, and shall add a concluding note upon their interconnection.

=Subjective Deduction.=--1. Consciousness of time is an experience whose actuality cannot be questioned; by its actuality it will therefore establish the reality of everything that can be proved to be its indispensable condition.

2. Among the conditions indispensably necessary to all consciousness of time are synthetic processes whereby the contents of consciousness, occurring in successive moments, are combined and unified. These processes are processes of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition.

3. Recognition, in turn, is conditioned by self-consciousness.

4. As no consciousness is possible without self-consciousness, the synthetic processes must have completed themselves before such self-consciousness is possible, and consequently are not verifiable by introspection but only by hypothetical construction.

[1, 2, 3, and 4 are steps which can be stated independently of the argument of the objective deduction.]

5. Self-consciousness presupposes consciousness of objects, and consciousness of objects presupposes the synthetic activities of productive imagination whereby the matter of sense is organised in accordance with the categories. These productive activities also are verifiable only by conjectural inference, and only upon their completion can consciousness of any kind make its appearance.

6. Consciousness of self and consciousness of objects thus alike rest upon a complexity of non-phenomenal conditions. For anything that critical analysis can prove to the contrary, consciousness and personality may not be ultimates. They may be resultants due to realities fundamentally different from themselves.

[5 is a conclusion obtained only by means of the argument of the objective deduction. 6 is a further conclusion, first explicitly drawn by Kant in the _Dialectic_.]

=Objective Deduction.=--1. The starting-point coincides with that of the subjective deduction. Consciousness of time is an experience by whose actuality we can establish the reality of its indispensable conditions.

2. Among the conditions necessary to all consciousness of time is self-consciousness.

3. Self-consciousness, in turn, is itself conditioned by consciousness of objects.

4. Consciousness of objects is possible only if the categories have validity within the sphere of sense-experience.

5. Conclusion.--The empirical validity of the categories, and consequently the empirical validity of our consciousness alike of the self and of objects, must be granted as a _conditio sine qua non_ of our consciousness of time. They are the indispensable conditions of that fundamental experience.

As above stated,[879] the preliminary stages of the subjective deduction prepare the way for the argument of the objective deduction, while the results obtained by the latter render possible the concluding steps of the former. That is to say, the objective deduction has to be intercalated midway between the opening and the concluding stages of the subjective deduction. It may also be observed that whereas the objective deduction embodies the main positive teaching of the _Analytic_, in that it establishes the possibility of natural science and of a metaphysics of experience, the subjective deduction is more directly concerned with the subject-matter of the _Dialectic_, reinforcing, as it does, the more negative consequences which follow from the teaching of the objective deduction--the impossibility of transcendent speculation. It stands in peculiarly close connection with the teaching of the section on the _Paralogisms_. We may now proceed to a detailed statement of the argument of the two deductions.

THE SUBJECTIVE DEDUCTION IN ITS INITIAL EMPIRICAL STAGES

In the opening of the subjective deduction Kant is careful to give due prominence to the temporal aspect of our human experience.

“...all the contents of our knowledge are ultimately subject to the
formal condition of inner sense, that is, to time, as that wherein
they must all be ordered, connected, and brought into relation to
one another. This is a general remark which the reader must bear in
mind as being a fundamental presupposition of my entire
argument.”[880]

Consciousness of time is thus the starting-point of the deduction. Analysis reveals it as highly complex; and the purpose of the deduction is to discover, and, as far as may be possible, to define its various conditions. The argument can best be expounded by reference to a single concrete example--say, our experience of a series of contents, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_, as in succession to one another and as together making up the total six. In order that such an experience may be possible the successive members of the series must be held together simultaneously before the mind. Obviously, if the earlier members dropped out of consciousness before the mind reached _f_, _f_ could not be apprehended as having followed upon them. There must be a synthesis of apprehension of the successive items.

Such a synthesis of apprehension is, however, only possible through reproduction of the earlier experiences. If when the mind has passed from _a_ to _f_, _f_ is apprehended as having followed upon _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, such consciousness is only possible in so far as these earlier contents are reproduced in image. Synthesis of apprehension is conditioned by synthesis of reproduction in imagination.

“But if the preceding representations (the first parts of [a] line,
the earlier moments of time or the units represented in sequent
order) were always to drop out of my thought, and were not
reproduced when I advance to those that follow, no complete
representation, and none of all the aforementioned thoughts, not
even the purest and first basal representations of space and time,
could ever arise.”[881]

In order, however, that the reproduced images may fulfil their function, they must be recognised as standing for or representing contents which the self has just experienced.

“Without the consciousness that what we are thinking is the same as
what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of
representations would be in vain.”[882]